M Night Shyamalan is apparently working on a film
about crop circles, at the moment, intriguingly. While on
a vaster and less mysterious scale, some Australian finished a
four-million
square metre portrait out in the Mundi Mundi Plains, this week.

Segway. Segue. A very, very slow one.
I've a suspicion that these sorts
of things will only ever work properly in a peaceful, beramped utopia,
or in Portmeirion. That these wheeled Zimmer-frames will only get the
chance to revolutionise inner-city transport if there's absolutely no
private ownership of them, if people simply abandon them outside cafés
and libraries and shops, and pick up new ones when they leave. Or if
their user-ident system is rigged with highly localised explosives. Both
fairly unlikely, as society stands.

The Segway site gushes a bit of smoke and mirror about the things being
quicker than walking, but those fin-de-siecle metal scooters were
quicker than walking, and I don't remember them conquering the world,
particularly. And they were cheaper and far more portable than this
lawnmower-of-the-Daleks, whilst only looking marginally more stupid. All
kudos for industrial niche applications and sheer billionaire gimmickry,
but ech. I'll stick with my variable-speed intuitive-control hijack-proof
legs for now.